Competition model for the 'Ruins of the Future' competition, Adelaide Festival of the Arts

1:100 working model for the Macarthur Gardens Visitor Information Centre

Working models, Macarthur Gardens Visitor Information Centre

Eoghan Lewis Architects was established in 2012. Since then the practice has earned a reputation for sensitive and highly crafted work evidenced in a number of architectural awards along with widespread publication in magazines at home and abroad. Our aim is to design contextually responsive, individual buildings that entwine aesthetic values with functional rationalism and environmental considerations.

The aim of the practice has never been to court the commercial sector, preferring instead to seek the opportunities of design and craftsmanship that exist in bespoke architecture. This experience of designing architecturally ambitious buildings, often within the constraints of meagre resources, has given the practice a constructional intelligence borne equally of enthusiasm and pragmatism.

Design Fundamentals

Our design process is driven by firm fundamentals. Issues concerning planning, orientation and siting, natural light, passive design principles, appropriate climatic response, social interaction and intelligent and sensitive material selection are key to every project and for us are at the heart of all great architecture. Once these principles have been adequately addressed, only then do we allow ourselves room to explore the poetic possibilities and detailed resolution that make a project sing!

Process

Projects begin quietly and optimistically. Armed with a set of questions and certain lines of enquiry (as opposed to a pre-packaged 'style' or set of solutions) we set off like detectives in a foreign landscape, gently agitating the context, looking for what is latent or already there in project, Brief and place. Through a process of research, exploration and negotiation with already present possibilities - ideas emerge. This is a strategy adapted from more than fifteen years of research on the design methodology of Joern Utzon and from the work of some of Eoghan's teachers like Professor Michael Tawa and Richard Leplastrier; a bottom-up, holistic or ecological approach, designed to meet your budget, exceed your expectations and produce lovely and appropriate architecture.

Having a Go, Making Stuff & Doing Things

The spirit of having a go, making stuff and doing things is at the heart of why we do architecture and drives the work of our studio. Architects should be optimists and a love of ideas, beautiful things and great design is expressed in everything we do whilst at the same time being married to a pragmatic rationalism. After all, there is nothing more beautiful than the object that so simply, elegantly and efficiently fulfils its task; just look at anything designed by nature! So whilst our head is in the clouds and our pockets are filled with dreams, feet stay planted on the ground!

Analogue / Digital

In our studio, the process of drawing and 'drawing out' ideas through quick, iterative overlay sketches works in parallel with an exploration of ideas three-dimensionally in rough media (foam, cardboard and balsa or whatever is on hand) and in sophisticated CAD software. Analogue and digital processes are magic when they work hand in hand. Throughout the process we use the medium that is most effective for the stage of the project.

Good Design

We are dedicated to providing our clients with simple and innovative solutions that add value to your project.

Good design finds simple solutions to complex problems. Good design solves more than one problem. Good design is logical, respectful and sensitive. Good design does the most with the least and is thorough down to the last detail. Good design is innovative, beautiful and lean.

In a city full of bloated, poorly or over-designed buildings driven by real estate agents, marketeers and dodgy developers, good design stands out like a proverbial sore thumb and adds serious value to your project and quality of life in every way.

Recognition & Design Excellence.

Eoghan Lewis Architects is actively involved in furthering design excellence through conference presentations, lectures, design competitions and our public research project, Sydney Architecture Walks. Our work is widely published and has received numerous awards.

Eoghan Lewis Architects is one of a select group of firms that is pre-qualified under the NSW Government Architect’s Strategy & Design Excellence Prequalification Scheme for ‘Architecture’ and ‘Emerging Design Practices’.

Our Studios

We are located in "Marlborough House" in Surry Hills. As much factory as pristine showcase for design, this is a relaxed environment where project management happens in parallel with designing, thinking and exploration through model-making, prototyping, heaps of drawings and experimentation with ideas, materials and manufacturing often in collaboration with creatives around us. The process is messy but refined; low-tech and hi-tech; digital and analogue; two and three-dimensional.

Eoghan Lewis

Eoghan Lewis is a registered architect (registration no 8993) and founding director of Eoghan Lewis Architects. Prior to practice, Eoghan founded design practice Supple Design and has worked in London, Stuttgart and Berlin for a variety of prominent international firms including Zvi Hecker, Auer and Weber, Engelen Moore, Collins +Turner, Hill Thalis and BVN.